History of Latin America

The Jesuits’ colonial legacy in Latin America is well-known. They pioneered an interest in indigenous languages and cultures, compiling dictionaries and writing some of the earliest ethnographies of the region. They also explored the region’s natural history and made significant contributions to the development of science and medicine. On their estates and in the missions they introduced new plants, livestock, and agricultural techniques, such as irrigation. In addition, they left a lasting legacy on the region’s architecture, art, and music.

The volume demonstrates the diversity of Jesuit contributions to Latin American culture. This volume is unique in considering not only the range of Jesuit activities but also...

In
recent years, child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have made
the perilous journey to the United States in unprecedented numbers, but their peers
in Nicaragua have remained at home. Nicaragua also enjoys lower murder rates
and far fewer gang problems when compared with her neighbours.

Why
is Nicaragua so different? The present government has promulgated a discourse
of Nicaraguan exceptionalism, arguing that Nicaragua is unique thanks to the
heritage of the 1979 Sandinista revolution. This volume critically interrogates
that claim, asking whether the legacy of the revolution is truly exceptional.
An interdisciplinary work, the book brings together historians,...

In recent years, academics, policy makers and media outlets have increasingly recognised the importance of Caribbean migrations and migrants to the histories and cultures of countries across the Northern Atlantic.

Memory, Migration and (De)Colonisation furthers our understanding of the lives of many of these migrants, and the contexts through which they lived and continue to live. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between Caribbean migrants and processes of decolonisation. The chapters in this book range across disciplines and time periods to present a vibrant understanding of the ever-changing interactions between Caribbean peoples and colonialism as they migrated within and between colonial...

Leslie
Bethell is the most respected scholar of Brazil of his generation. This has
been recognized in Brazil by being made a corresponding fellow of both the
Brazilian Academy of Letters and of Sciences. Perhaps best known for his book The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave
Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), Leslie Bethell’s
scholarship has ranged widely not least in his editorship of the 12-volume Cambridge History of Latin America
(1984-2008). In recent years he has continued to research the modern history of
Brazil, much of which he has presented in invited lectures and Brazilian
journals and remained unpublished in English until now. In 2010 he presented a provocative paper in
the...

This collection of essays
and research articles has been designed, by its breadth of expertise and
discipline, to pay suitable homage to the seminal influence and contribution
made by the late Alistair Hennessy towards the development of Cuban studies.
For that reason, it includes a judicious mixture of the old and the new, including
several of the leading and internationally well-established experts on Cuban
history, politics and culture, but also some up-and-coming researchers in the
field; that mixture and the combination of topics (some addressing the past
directly, others assessing the present within a historical context) reflects
Hennessy’s own cross-disciplinary and open-minded approach to the study of the
history of...